A New 'Third Rail' in American Politics?

I’ve been watch­ing reports of demon­stra­tions all over the US, from New Mex­ico, Min­nesota, Michi­gan, Iowa, Alabama, Utah, Ore­gon, Idaho to Cal­i­for­nia. What really caught my eye were the last cou­ple para­graphs of a report tonight:

Voter reg­is­tra­tion and cit­i­zen­ship edu­ca­tion ini­tia­tives are set to begin in sev­eral states after a “Day With­out An Immi­grant” cam­paign planned for May 1, an event that asks immi­grants nation­wide to stay home from work and school, and refrain from buy­ing U.S. products.

“Marches will only get you so far,” said Armando Navarro, coor­di­na­tor of the National Alliance for Human Rights, a net­work of His­panic activist groups in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. “There has to be an elec­toral com­po­nent to get the Repub­li­cans out of the majority.”

I also noticed a head­line that Bush is blam­ing Democ­rats (and in par­tic­u­lar, Harry Reid, the Sen­ate Minor­ity Leader) for “stalled immi­gra­tion reform”.

If I saw a wave of indig­na­tion sweep­ing the coun­try, the last thing I’d do is blame the other party for being on the pro­test­ers’ side. Could Immi­gra­tion Reform be the final blow to the Repub­li­cans that removes their grip on the House and Sen­ate? Jour­nal­ists have always talked about Social Secu­rity being ‘the third rail’ of pol­i­tics, mean­ing that any­one who tried to ‘reform’ it would be removed from power, like some­one step­ping on the sub­way power trans­mis­sion track. Could the sleep­ing giant of immi­gra­tion be the new area of vul­ner­a­bil­ity they hadn’t even seen coming?

Here in Canada, Immi­gra­tion is also in the news, but it’s a far more pos­i­tive story; It’s a for­mal apol­ogy and poten­tial repa­ra­tions for the ‘Head Tax’ that was placed on Chi­nese immi­grants here in the past. Nev­er­the­less, I can’t say I’m sorry to see the Repub­li­cans feel­ing the wrath of the chang­ing Amer­i­can elec­torate. Maybe the far Right won’t be able to count on the social con­ser­v­a­tives within the Latin Amer­i­can com­mu­nity to push through their agenda after all.